Lens – Lentil: Another City

While growing up, Beirut was not so much a geographical city. Itwas torn down to its elements: it was streets, gas stations, shops… All streets had lost their names. It used to be divided and subdivided everyday... And even today, most of the Beiruties do not know how to read a map of their city. Beirut, the city, was a name, an idea. The streets, the geography did not necessarily correspond to that city.’

In his video titled Un Cercle autour du Soleil/A Circle Around the Sun (2005) Ali Cherri, who experienced Lebanese civil war (1974-1991) during his childhood and adolescent years, reconstructs ‘Beirut’ where war was almost an ordinary element of everyday life and the war experience was not necessarily described as ‘traumatizing’ and an unexpected feeling of unsafety he faces after the war was over.

‘I imagine there is more in images, newspapers, sign boards, books, traditions and recommendations next to and mixed into what is there.’

Although, especially in big cities, going from one place to another could be considered as a journey on its own, most of the times the destination and afterwards preoccupy the passenger during the travel. Nur Muşkara’s photographs document a kind of witnessing that we all experience everyday in the city however perhaps could only attest if photographed. The photographs Muşkara has produced in Izmir and perhaps the act itself, photographing the ordinary details which are already forgotten when seen, tend to inspire a sense of surreality.